


Hold Still, Or It Won't Hurt Enough

by JasperIsAFanboy



Series: The Afternoon Light Cuts to Size [13]
Category: Blood Drive (TV)
Genre: Body Modification, Don't Try This At Home, Ear Piercings, Fluff, M/M, Tattoos, or as fluffy as these two get anyway, srsly go to a pro for ur body mod needs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 03:42:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13849371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasperIsAFanboy/pseuds/JasperIsAFanboy
Summary: Or: Julian and Rasher like sticking each other with needles.





	1. Julian's Ear

**Author's Note:**

> psa: pls don't get piercings or tattoos by anyone other than a professional. don't go to ur brother's best friend w a machine in his basement, don't go to a kiosk in the mall. find a reputable shop and go there instead. u can get nasty infections (like hepatitis or staph) from improperly sanitized conditions/equipment and the pros are trained in preventing those.
> 
> title borrowed from the show (the homemade dentistry scene from ep4). set in d__T's "the afternoon light cuts to size" 'verse. one day i'll figure out how to do pretty links in the notes. html? i don't know her

Rasher hears the jingle of Julian’s belt and its pouch as he settles into the chair, but doesn’t turn around. He finally finds the box of pre-wrapped needles and the alcohol swabs and grabs both. Then he turns, sees Julian whole and well once more, sitting there like he’d never even left. Like he hadn’t been run over by a fucking semi, turned into something more resembling hamburger than a person. Julian gives Rasher one of his signature toothy grins, and it only expands when he sees the needles and swabs in Rasher’s hands.

“How well you know me,” he croons, taking off his hat. 

Rasher reflects that he will never, ever get used to seeing Julian die and come back, no matter how many times he sees it. Each incident still brings a flicker of the panic and grief that he’d only barely kept at bay the first time. What if this is the last time? What if he won’t see Slink back in his trailer as if he’d only been mildly inconvenienced? What if next time it takes and he’s gone for good? Rasher can’t run the Blood Drive on his own, he just doesn’t have the… the whatever it is that makes Julian who and what he is. The charisma. He’s a monster who could (and once did) eat the entire race but he can’t wind up a crowd like Julian, he can’t convince people to follow him as easily as breathing like Julian, he can’t be a god. A demon, sure. And maybe he makes a good archangel, so to speak, he can keep the practical aspects running, but without Julian playing God the race is just gore. Julian is what elevates it to something actually approaching art (and maybe that means Rasher’s bought too much into Julian’s bullshit but he doesn’t care).

He doesn’t miss the way Julian’s pale eyes slide across his exposed collarbones; Rasher’s only wearing the corset and collar and his skinny jeans, no jacket. The spray of blood across his left shoulder is quite clear. He’d taken out his rage on the driver of the semi that had run over Julian, fed him in ragged chunks to the maw (which is happily quiescent, content for the moment on two hundred pounds of meat and bone). Rasher knows Julian’s going to give him so much shit later; after all, Rasher had hired the driver himself, so desperate for roadies that he hadn’t bothered to find out anything about the man other than his ability to drive a rig and not look twice at shoving a body into its engine. But how was he to know the man was the brother of a driver who’d died in the third season, that he’d be mental enough to try to seek revenge? Ironically Julian hadn’t even been the cause of the driver’s death. Rasher had eaten him. But the asshole had run Julian over, apparently blaming his brother’s death on the man in charge, not the monster at that man’s side.

Rasher pushes the thoughts of that particular embarrassment away and drags over a table to set the needles and swabs on. He’d already set a barbell with one end gone and a box of medical-grade rubber gloves on it. He pulls on a pair of gloves and tears a swab open. Julian obligingly tilts his head to the side, baring his left ear. 

“Wish you’d stop dying,” Rasher said as he methodically cleaned Julian’s earlobe with the swab. It was his insistence, not Julian’s; the first time Julian had Rasher re-pierce his ear after dying, it had gotten infected and Julian had whined so pathetically the entire time that Rasher had been tempted to kill him again himself. “It’s a pain having to redo your ear every fuckin’ time.”

“Well, no one anticipated me actually  _ wanting _ to stick holes in myself, so no one thought to make them permanent,” Julian says. “My tattoo’s gone, too."

“I’m not redoing that one.” Once was enough, drawing on skin with a vibrating needle was worlds away from drawing on paper and Julian had been an incredible wuss about it. His accelerated healing meant Rasher had had to go over and over each line, and the whole thing had taken three times as long as it should have. He’d come close to sedating him somehow just to keep him from squirming. Rasher hates tattooing Julian. He’ll stick with piercing his ear. If Julian wants his tattoo back, he can go with Rasher the next time Rasher goes to a shop.

Julian pouts and is about to speak but subsides when Rasher opens one of the needles. Rasher refuses to use a gun, being in and out of tattoo parlours over the last year or so has given him a certain respect for the culture of body modification and the people who’ve made careers out of it. Needles are less traumatic, they’re sharp and hollow and actually remove tissue rather than force a comparatively blunt stud through the flesh of the ear. They pierce cleanly and easily. Guns can tear flesh or blood vessels, and the studs don’t allow for much movement or draining of the resultant injury. 

He takes Julian’s earlobe between his thumb and forefinger and picks up the needle. Piercing needles are like canulas, a slightly larger gauge than the actual jewelry to give the jewelry a place to rest and the flesh room to breath as it heals. He doesn’t ask Julian if he’s ready or if he wants a countdown or anything, just pushes the needle home. To his credit, Julian doesn’t flinch, but then again this is hardly the first time he’s had this done. Rasher pushes the needle halfway through so it’s hanging out of Julian’s ear and picks up the barbell. He threads it into the hollow end, draws the needle through the rest of the way. The barbell stays behind. He blots away the blood and picks up the other end of the barbell. He screws it on, then leans back. He resists the urge to pat Julian’s cheek the way Julian does to him sometimes.

“All done,” he says. “Try not to get killed before it heals.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Julian says only somewhat sneeringly as he picks up a hand-mirror and examines his ear. He gasps in evident delight. “It’s red! You found me a red one!”

Rasher turns away so Julian doesn’t see him grin behind his beard.


	2. Rasher's side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> psa (again bc i'm pedantic): srsly cats go to professionals, esp for tattoos. u might be able to get away w an amateur piercing (tho i'll silently judge u rly hard) but def DO NOT get tattoos from anyone other than pros.

Rasher shifts on the table. He doesn’t like lying there on his back with the maw exposed, it feels too risky. Not to mention it brings back memories of Heart, of writhing in agony on an operating table while his body warped and twisted and mutated, of dislocating his shoulders because his wrists are restrained and he's thrashing too hard. Occasionally the maw lets a tentacle out to taste the air like a snake’s tongue, maybe reacting to Rasher’s nerves. 

“Hurry the fuck up before the maw panics,” he says to Julian, who’s still fussing with the machine. “If it eats you I won’t be sorry this time.” 

“More like before  _ you _ panic,” Julian says. “How is it you let complete strangers tattoo your  _ face  _ but when it’s me coming for your ribs you’re nervous as a virgin on prom night?”

“ ‘Nervous as a virgin on prom night,’ really, Julian?  _ Really _ ? And those complete strangers are fucking professionals, by the way, not an amateur who can barely tell the business end of the machine from--”

Julian steps on the pedal, making the machine whine, and puts the vibrating cluster of needles right by Rasher’s eye. “I will absolutely tattoo your eye.”

“You realize that’s a real thing people do, right, that’s hardly a threat. I think I’d look badass with tattooed eyes.”

“Maybe I’ll just tattoo a dick on your face.”

“I will absolutely eat you.”

“But you’ll still have a dick on your face.”

“You realise I can get it covered up, don’t you? My standards might be level with the floor but at least I have them.”  _ Unlike you _ goes entirely unsaid.

Evidently Julian realizes this is a fight he’s not going to win, at least not to his satisfaction, because he just turns away and rolls his shirtsleeves up. For once he’s foregone one of the period shirts with loose cuffs. Once again, Rasher wonders why he’s letting Julian of all people tattoo him. As far as he knows Julian has absolutely no experience tattooing anybody. Well, Rasher supposes he owes him for having eaten him that one time. Julian scoots his chair closer to Rasher, pulls on latex gloves and considers the rainbow array of inks he’s set out in their little caps. He hasn’t told Rasher what he has in mind, nor has he prepped a stencil, and Rasher has to admit he’s nervous about letting Julian freehand something on him.

But at the end of the day, he knows Julian is entirely an aesthete, that whatever he has in mind won’t be completely awful. Julian might be a vindictive asshole, but (Rasher hopes) he has enough respect for aesthetics that he won’t just tattoo something stupid on him for the hell of it.

“Turn onto your side,” Julian says finally. Rasher gives him a somewhat quizzical look but obliges, rolling so his back is to Julian. He moves his arm up and out of the way, guessing Julian wants access to his flank. Sure enough, Julian swabs down Rasher’s flank, from his fifth or six rib almost to the prominent wing of his pelvis, and part of the way around his back. 

“What the hell are you gonna do that you need so much space?” Rasher asks. 

“You’ll see,” is all Julian says. 

“That’s not comforting.”

Julian ignores him. He uncaps a pen and starts sketching right on Rasher’s skin. While Rasher is moderately relieved he won’t be entirely freehanding the piece, he still wishes he could see what he’s drawing. He can’t even tell what it is by feel, though at least it doesn’t feel like a dick. After a few minutes Rasher feels the pen stop moving, feels Julian rubbing petroleum jelly onto his skin, then hears the machine come to life again. He has no idea what Julian’s drawn on him. Julian doesn’t ask if Rasher’s ready before he starts in. Rasher closes his eyes against the sharp, stinging pain and tries to breathe normally; rib pieces  _ hurt _ , especially since he has almost no cushioning flesh over his. The whine of the tattoo machine is piercing.

As bad as it is getting his ribs and back tattooed, it’s not as bad as his face. The maw twitches and a tentacle rolls out, but Rasher forces it to calm down. He’d made sure to feed it well before letting Julian do this, just so the pain wouldn’t make it think its host was being threatened, and it quiets down with a minimum of reluctance. Before too long the pain subsides somewhat, and Rasher lets his mind drift. This is the easy part, now that the pain has eased. There’s only so long a body can maintain a trauma state, after all. He wonders what Julian’s face looks like right now; he’s so expressive Rasher can’t imagine he just has a blankly focused look. Probably he’s frowning, maybe has his tongue sticking out between his lips. Once Rasher got a tattoo from a woman with a barbell in her tongue, and she’d had the barbell between her teeth the entire time.

Time seems to fade out, each second melting into the next with the buzz of the machine and the bright pain of the needles puncturing his skin. Whatever Julian’s doing must be very involved, unless Rasher’s sense of time is completely fucked up. It seems like it's taking forever. The only sense he has of anything is when Julian lifts the needle and wipes blood and excess ink from Rasher’s skin, or when he adds more jelly. He can’t see what he’s doing, so he has no idea how far along he is or what colors he’s using, if he’s using any color at all. 

“Done.”

Julian’s voice pulls Rasher out of the meditative state he’d fallen into. He cranes his head around without lifting it, but still can’t see; his shoulder’s in the way. Julian cleans his side of blood and ink one final time, the wet paper towel soothing against Rasher’s skin, and pats it dry. Rasher wonders how Julian managed to pick up this kind of professionalism; he’s felt like he’d gone to an actual shop rather than Julian’s trailer. Julian pulls out a roll of the clear plastic bandages hospitals use for burn victims and Rasher wonders anew. There were a lot of artists that weren’t using those yet, but here’s amateur Julian Slink with a brand new roll. He sizes it, cuts off a strip, and very carefully covers the tattoo.

Julian grins wide at Rasher. “Take a look,” he singsongs, obviously proud of himself, and holds up the handheld mirror.

Julian’s surprising professionalism aside, Rasher’s still concerned with what he drew on him. So with some trepidation he looks in the mirror. His brows rise.

“Holy shit, Julian,” he says. Julian has drawn a gaslamp with an eye replacing the flame hanging from a loop of twisted barbed wire. Rasher’s no expert, but he thinks the gaslamp matches the era of Julian’s wardrobe. The eye shines, its iris the same red-brown as Rasher’s own and the beams copper and gold. Julian’s even rendered shadows behind the barbed wire in purple to create an impressive 3D effect. The gaslamp is shaded and highlighted flawlessly. He gets off the table and goes to Julian’s full-length mirror to examine it properly. Forget his professionalism, where the hell had Julian learned to  _ draw _ like this? Rasher’s never seen him draw. He realizes there are touches of blue and green in the eye, a hint of Julian’s eyes.

“Like it?” Julian asks. Rasher can see him cleaning up the ink caps and the needles and the machines, but he glances up as he asks.

“Fuckin’ A, I like it,” Rasher replies, turning back and carefully lowering his arm. “How’d you think of it?”

“The Blood Drive might be my vision, but you help it actually become a reality,” Julian says after a moment. “I don’t have the patience for the logistics. You do. You see how to make this thing run. It, and  _ I, _ wouldn’t work without you. The barbed wire just looks good.”

Julian immediately goes back to cleaning up while Rasher stares open-mouthed at him. That’s probably the closest he’s ever heard Julian come to admitting he genuinely cares about someone other than himself, or that the success of the Blood Drive relies on something besides Julian’s harebrained ideas. It actually blows Rasher’s mind a little. He didn’t think Julian had it in him. His first instinct is to laugh it off, make an immediate joke, thinking Julian’s having him on, but Julian’s ears are red and he realizes he was serious. Julian stands to throw the disposable detritus of the tattooing away, and Rasher goes to him and pulls him around for a kiss. He lets a tentacle curl out of the maw and wrap around Julian’s waist. 

“Thank you,” he says when he pulls away. “Really.”

Julian grins and pats his cheek. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Rasher, who goes back to the mirror to admire the lantern.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not sorry for soapboxing abt needles vs guns, guns are terrible and u shouldn't get ur ears pierced w a gun. i don't care if u or someone u know had good luck w a gun. i had all four of my lobe piercings initially done w guns and each one gave me a shitload of trouble. i'd be willing to bet the guns are why i had trouble stretching them, too. get it done w a needle by a pro. end of discussion.


End file.
